Glass is in widespread use for interior/exterior constructive materials largely due to its transparent and aesthetic characteristics but likely to break and vulnerable to fire. As toughened glass and fire-resistant glass are available to remedy the disadvantages of glass like breakableness and low resistance to fire, glass has more widespread usages in surface materials for electronic equipment such as mobile phones, home appliances such as refrigerators, air conditioners, etc., tableware, furniture, or the like. With the recent advent of electronic equipment integrated on a glass panel, clear electronic equipment has been widely used. Such glass materials are often exposed to perspiration, saliva, dust, grease, smoke, moisture, and so forth and thus liable to afford support for the propagation of germs, and the germs can spread to the hands that come into contact with the glass.
As a solution to this problem, there has been developed antimicrobial glass that has an antimicrobial function in addition to the features of regular glass. Particularly, the antimicrobial glass for use in a glass panel for electronic equipment is required to maintain high transparency and have an antimicrobial function, and mechanical durability is needed to the glass panel with an antimicrobial function.
Further, the electromagnetic radiation produced from the circuits mounted in all kinds of electronic equipment possibly causes malfunction of the equipment or electromagnetic interference, eventually with deterioration in the performance of the product and reduction of the product's life span. Furthermore, the heating effect of the electromagnetic radiation absorbed by the living cells of a human body can raise the temperature of the living tissue to weaken the immune function. Thus, there is an increasing demand for a glass product that satisfies the electromagnetic compatibility (EMC), which means that it not only emits the least of the electromagnetic radiation from the equipment to the outside to cause little interference to other peripheral equipment, but also gets less affected by the interference of the electromagnetic radiation produced by the peripheral equipment.
The most important features required to the EMC product inserted in all kinds of electronic equipment are high electromagnetic shielding effectiveness, high specific absorption rate (SAR), and slime and small-size profile in line with the trend for minimization to manufacture ever smaller and slimmer products.
In addition, there are a variety of electronic equipment or devices with touchscreen technologies that enable the user to operate the equipment or devices by touching the screen in consideration of the user's convenience. Using the touch screen with one or more fingers leaves fingerprints and smudges on the screen due to dirt and grease of the fingers, which has an adverse effect to spoil the aesthetic of the touch screen. Further, the touch screen can suffer from the problem of fingerprints on the display that the fingerprint oil residue can deteriorate the clarity of the fingerprints and results in poor definition of the display. Thus the user of the touchscreen electronic equipment often uses a fingerprint-resistant screen protector that attaches on the face of the equipment. The screen protector is easy to replace but poor in durability and inconvenient to use in that it is likely to be installed on the face of the equipment with air bubbles or imperfect alignment.
According to the prior art, it is necessary to provide separate functional layers on a glass panel for the sake of giving an antimicrobial function, an electromagnetic shielding effect, or an anti-fingerprint effect. This takes a long processing time and lowers the productivity, causing a rise of the production cost.